


Revenant

by JiM



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-25
Updated: 2011-02-25
Packaged: 2017-10-15 22:42:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/165599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JiM/pseuds/JiM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boy died on Tarsus IV; the man remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revenant

Jim Kirk died on Tarsus IV.

 

He told them that when they came to get him.  He tried once or twice more with the counselors and therapists they sent to talk to all the children.  One very nice man explained, his arm warm around the boy’s shoulders, that it probably felt like that and that he would never really be that boy again, but that he should move on with his life and try to discover who Jim Kirk would be now.

 

So he does.

 

It turns out that he isn’t very good at it for a while.  It’s hard to be the live son of a dead father and a woman whose words are measured by the light years between them.  Foster care can only take him so far and he makes some mistakes along the way before a bizarre meeting with Christopher Pike shows him who he should try to be. 

 

Along the way, he makes some friends; the best of them is Leonard McCoy.  He turns out to be the best person to help shape him into Jim Kirk.  He bullies and bitches and curses him into studying, into caring, into being the best he can be.  He still makes some damned fool mistakes, trying to be who he should be.  But, when it really counts, Leonard McCoy doesn’t leave him behind.  Leonard reminds him that Jim Kirk doesn’t leave people behind.

 

Pretty soon, the man called Jim Kirk has saved a world and been given the captaincy of the most beautiful thing in his universe – the _Enterprise_.  He sits on the bridge and stares out at the field of stars and has to close his eyes and thank the boy who died on Tarsus IV.  Without him, he wouldn’t be here today and it is everything he could never have dreamed of. 

 

Because Jim Kirk was his friend.  Andy was a year older, but the two were inseparable as they romped the fields and played in the orchards around the settlement.  They looked enough like brothers to be mistaken for them even before the hungry times came.  After everyone started to look thin and gray and worn, after their hair started falling out and everyone’s eyes were at half-mast and sunken, they were mirror-ghosts for one another.

 

When the “selections” came, he knew he’d be chosen.  He just wasn’t smart enough or strong enough.  He had too many allergies and even in good times his father had called him a “poor specimen”.  His name didn’t matter then.  He knew his father would turn him over, be proud of the public sacrifice he was making.  His sister would be saved – she was smart, talented and beautiful.  But Andy was none of those things.  So when Jim Kirk came whispering in the night to him, he went.

 

They ran, disappearing into the hills they knew so well.  His father’s squads couldn’t find them and had to stop before they wasted valuable calories on finding boys who would starve.  They hadn’t, not at first.  Jim was good at identifying the edible native roots and herbs and Andy could catch insects.  They kept themselves safe and fed, if not well.

 

But Jim had had a cold that first week and it never quite went away.  The cold nights spent clinging to one another never warmed him up. His lungs grew worse and his coughing shook them as they huddled in their hiding place.

 

That last night, the night they thought they heard voices calling for them in the dark, Jim was dying and they both knew it.  He just sat there with his friend’s burning face pressed against his shoulder and listened to him whisper his last instructions.

 

“Andy, when they come for you, tell them you’re me.  I had a good number.  Even if he’s still pissed about my running away, you’ll be one of the ‘colony assets’.”  Even with his lungs bubbling with fluid, Jim still managed to spit out that hated phrase.

 

“Jimmy…”

 

“Just do it,” Jim had whispered fiercely before the coughing caught him.  Andy held him as they wracked his body again and again. When they finally stopped, Jim’s heart had stopped too.

 

A week later, a week after they heard shuttle engines roaring down from the sky, Andy barely had enough strength to walk most of the way back to the colony.  But he made it far enough to collapse on the road.  He was found by the search team and his life was saved.

 

He did try, honestly he did.  Once he knew that Governor Kodos was no longer in charge of the colony, that he didn’t need to hide behind Jim’s name.  But by then, everyone wanted, needed to believe that George Kirk’s miracle son had survived.  They ignored the evidence of sudden allergies cropping up and blamed it on the stress of starvation.  They put his mood swings and loss of knowledge down to post traumatic disorder.  Even Jim’s mother doesn’t realize that he isn’t her son and how fucked up is that? 

 

So Andy lives Jim’s life for him.  He takes up the mantle of George Kirk’s legacy and doesn’t mind.  In fact, deep in the night, it makes him smile just a little.  George Kirk has no blood relative left in the universe to carry on his genetic heritage, but Andy brings honor to his name.  Andy’s own father has a surviving genetic legacy, but his name will die out in shame and horror.

 

It is a fitting revenge, Andreuj Kodos thinks, and Captain James T. Kirk turns his attention back to the running of his ship.

 


End file.
